Alight of Night

Slumberland;
2008

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Every time Brad Hargett mumbles "existence" or "resistance" on "The Dazzled"-- track one of Crystal Stilts' debut LP, Alight of Night-- I hear "market systems." I'm also pretty sure he mentions exchange rates in "Prismatic Room". And I swear that morose, deadpan voice crawling out of "Spiral Transit"'s sonic swamp is desperately trying to communicate something about business buildings housing holy banks and manufacturing messiahs. Oh, wait: Hargett does actually sing that last bit. So obviously I'm seeking a tonic for the Global Depression ulcer gnawing my gut, anything on which to project and deflect my own fears that it's the end of the world as I know it. Lucid name aside, Crystal Stilts hold up a convenient dark glass.

But really, it's a mistake to get hung up on the band's lyrics-- real or imagined. In the tradition of self-titled tracks, "Crystal Stilts" does seem to want to say something about their origins and strategic plan. The chorus, "We're courting dreams/ We're snorting dreams/ Distorting dreams/ Recording dreams," surfs waves of gnarly Pacific Coast riffage and gleeful garage organ. But you need a lyric sheet to get even that far, and like their Brooklyn cohorts in Vivian Girls (drummer Frankie Rose's former gig), Crystal Stilts invest little in discrete motifs, neat narratives, or relatable emotions, preferring instead fog-machined setpieces of non-specific mope and gloom. "Crystal Stilts" is, in fact, the band's sunniest song. More-typical fare is the punningly titled "SinKing" with its chaotic, runaway train rhythm, discordant chordage, and doomed (but also intentionally humorous, surely) cries of "Sin king/ sinking", or the blunt, emphatic "Bright Night", that scans like a paranoid midnight odyssey to an impossibly distant sunrise.

"Bright Night", along with five others, appeared earlier this year in more primitive form on the band's self-titled EP, a release that probably made a stronger-- or at least, more concise-- case for Crystal Stilts' disheveled pop. Alight of Night, put out by the recently awakened Slumberland, enjoys a more relaxed vibe and adds a couple keepers to the band's catalogue. But its best songs-- "Crystal Stilts", "Departure" (originally "Converging in the Quiet"), "Shattered Shine"-- are carry-overs. And the long-player packs some less-appealing filler: "Verdant Gaze" and "The City in the Sea" perform too literal a reading of the Velvet Underground's drony numbers, with dreary results.

Since we're on the subject of influence, the band makes no pretense to originality. Hamish Kilgour's public benediction wasn't essential to solving the Crystal Stilts/Kiwi pop equation, and it's a pretty sure bet that Psychocandy bridged the temporal distance between the original girl groups and the band's utilitarian beats. Also, as much as I hate to encourage the Interpol curse, Alight of Night is lousy with Joy Division. It's not just Hargett's dolorous baritone or word-associative post-industrial rumblings, but also the Hook/Sumner-like bass/guitar pas de deux that render many of Crystal Stilts' songs surprisingly amenable to awkward, self-conscious foot-shuffling.

If the worst you can say about an album is that it's derivative and harbors a few ho-hum tracks, that ain't much in the liability column-- particularly when said album is stocked with so many good-to-great songs. Crystal Stilts make terrific use of their recycled material, appropriating favorite forebears' brooding moves (and their richly endowed signifiers), and contributing their own deft hooks and stealth energy. "Departure" would be an unlikely anthem most seasons, but in this autumn of our discontent its single-minded, breathlessly chugging bass, no-bullshit beats, elegiac keys, and chiming guitar raising the melody above the muck... it's perfect. "Departure"'s the song you reach for when you want to party like it's 1929.